Through Trial to Triumph
by Meiran Chang
Summary: Idris Mahariel is dying or mad, and his best friend and brother is lost to him forever, so why won't the bloody shem leave him and his clan to their sorrow? Dalish Origin retelling in two parts: COMPLETE. Reviews treasured.
1. Per Angusta

The Keeper says she's cured him. Idris is on his feet, sure, but he doesn't feel cured. The world spins, slow and heavy, sunlight prickling against his skin. His hands are trembling, and he keeps them at his side when he speaks to the Keeper, hoping she doesn't notice.

If she notices, she doesn't comment on it. Maybe she's uncomfortable thinking her enchantments failed, or maybe she really doesn't realize that he's about as cured as a leper after a nap, but it doesn't matter.

The hunters haven't found Tamlen.

Idris can't stay still. He veers from aravel to aravel, methodically rifling through crates and bushes. Health poultice: Tamlen may need this, leather gloves: Tamlen may like this, a scroll: Tamlen definitely likes those, he will want to read about the fall of Arlathan so he can bore Idris with it later. Idris will listen to all of his mind-numbing stories. Later.

He stops to pluck the leaves off a familiar herb. Elfroot: ground into a paste and mixed with deep mushrooms and the right agents, it will serve to heal his lethallin's injuries. Flasks tinkle together in his pack. He is carrying about twelve knives for no reason except that he wants to be extremely armed, and half again as many scrolls because Tamlen will like them, Tamlen will want to be read to when he is recovering, and Idris will not have it said that he slighted his lethallin's wishes in a time of need. Finally Idris straightens and goes to seek Merrill.

There is an indistinct humming in his ears, and through it, he hears about half of the words that are spoken to him — enough to know what he needs to know. The mirror, the cave, a shem. Get Tamlen. Got it. Somehow Fenarel has added himself to the expedition. If Merrill has a problem with it, Idris doesn't notice or care. _Time to go. Must leave._

Like an arrow flying towards its target, his whole body thrums with the need to return to the cave — the source of the vague song that drums relentlessly in his skull.

His head wants to split apart. Idris presses a hand to his hair, and his hand comes away wet with sweat. He feels the look Fenarel and Merrill pass between them as he wipes his hand off on his armor.

When the twisted creatures charge them on the way to the cave, Idris for the first time since waking feels whole and hale. His longswords sing their way out of their sheaths, spill a whole shining swath of blood across the forest floor. The fight takes seconds, and Idris grins his way through it. Merrill looks sick and horrified, Fenarel little better, the tiny muscles of his face twitching beneath his vallaslin; through a wavering gaze, Idris observes this with interest, sheathing his swords.

Merrill murmurs something in a tone of concern that instantly wipes the grin off Idris's face. He waves her off through clenched teeth and plunges deeper into the forest. The ruins sprout around them, broken pillars like sagging daisy heads in a blighted field.

Merrill keeps _talking _as they descend underground, and Idris's head is throbbing to distraction. The only thing he hears is about Tamlen, and it is infuriating. Leave his body unburied? They aren't going to find his _body_. They are going to find _him_. Idris's furious glare stills the words in her blathering mouth. More twisted creatures spring from the sour song of the ruins, twisted notes Idris can almost see shimmering in the air. He catches their necks with his blades, wriggles one sword in the gristle of one's spine till it cracks.

He and Tamlen will toss the heads around and laugh. Later.

Idris kicks open the heavy door to the room with the mirror, one hand already in his pack for the health poultice in case his lethallin needs it after having slain everything with a pulse. He expects to see Tamlen turn to him with a smirk, _you're getting slow in your old age, Idris, I could have vallaslined my balls in all the time you wasted dawdling_ , but instead there is a shemlen, tall and broad, glittering like six feet of silver tinsel.

The dull song in his head shrieks to a crescendo. Idris's hands fist at his sides with the effort of not staggering beneath its weight. The shem looks familiar, a bleary, nightmarish memory, a low deep voice, _I am sorry _ through a wracking agony that burns in every single vein. Merrill is appalled by Idris's rudeness, and Fenarel radiates awkward discomfort, but Idris cannot care less, and the shem seems perfectly unruffled.

"We are looking for our brother Tamlen," Idris says firmly. The shem's lips move, but all Idris understands is that the mirror made Tamlen sick. The song surges in his head, and Idris keeps his back perfectly tall and straight, imagines his boots are roots keeping him firmly connected to the ground, resists the urge to sway with the haunting melody. _Destroy_, he hears faintly. "Then we should destroy it," he hears himself say, wedding the words to his will. _Then we will destroy... _

The shem turns, and with a flash of steel the mirror shatters. The clatter of falling glass hides Idris's choked inhalation, and bile rises in his throat, sharp and acrid at the back of his mouth. The shem turns back to the assembled party, and his bottomless eyes are serious on Idris as he explains that Idris is still sick. Idris isn't sure what he says, but he manages some semblance of a response that doesn't antagonize Merrill or offend the inscrutable human thing.

When the man suggests they leave, though, Idris comes close to drawing his blades.

Fenarel's hand on his shoulder keeps Idris from doing anything other than stepping forward as he shouts, "I'm not leaving until I find him!" Creators damn the bloody shemlen race, to whom hearth and home, kith and clan mean _nothing_ . The song roars in his ears with a vengeance: _Destroy. Destroy._ It is magnificent.

The shem speaks slowly and clearly: "There is **nothing**... tainted for three days now, unaided..." But Idris can scarcely hear him. Brow furrowed, he shakes his head, as much to shake off the intrusive song as the human's words. He chokes out something through a tongue that seems thick in his mouth, and the sorrow in the human's eyes incenses him. He turns his back and leaves the room, stumbling over the body of one of the twisted creatures.

Fenarel catches his elbow without speaking, steadying him. Idris flinches at the touch. If Fenarel or Merrill say aught else, Idris cannot hear them at all. He pushes aside dirt and roots and rocks until his knees hurt and his hands are black with mud, sifts through skeletons of bandits and treasure-seekers long dead, coughs on the dust he raises. Kicks aside corpses. Lifts old carved tiles. He rips down vines and spider-webs, shoves statues to the floor where they crack or fall apart. Tamlen could be anywhere, hidden, hurt. Needing his lethallin. Idris will not give in to the shem's repulsive suggestion that he abandon his sick clanmate to his fate.

And the song is in every stone. The song is threaded through every strand of spider silk, vibrates in the rust on old chests, hums in warped wood, swirls with the dust motes. Fenarel and Merrill make noises behind him, doubtful noises the longer time passes without any sign of Tamlen, "we should go back," infuriating sounds. His strength is beginning to fail him as grief overtakes him the way moss overtakes a stone, the way the song has overtaken this fallen temple's mysteries.

There are wooden beams set into the floor of one large room, some forgotten traveler's attempt at reinforcing the structure's crumbling architecture. Idris falls to his knees and digs his fingers into one of the beams, intending to rip it out so that he can descend further in case Tamlen has been dragged there. But a cramp seizes his gut like a toy in an ogre's hand and Idris convulses there on the ground, retching until a wash of blood and bile comes pouring out of him, dripping between the beams into an endless, singing underground. He can scarcely take a breath without gagging, wrapping his arms around the cramps in his abdomen, his forehead pressed against the dirty floor.

Fenarel drags him to his feet once he has retched himself empty, supporting all his weight as Idris shivers. The song is mocking. _ Destroy. _ Tamlen is beyond his reach. _ Destroy. _ Tamlen is destroyed, and Idris's whole being longs to follow him. To follow him down. _ Down. _ The earth will embrace them. Later. _ Down. _

When Idris raises his eyes, Merrill's staff is pointed at him. He falls into a sea of gray and floats there gently, knowing nothing for a merciful time.


	2. Ad Augusta

When Idris wakes up, he feels a little better. Free of the temple, the song fades and is tolerable. His gut still hurts, and his throat is sore from vomiting, but he can hear and see. Fenarel and Merrill were kind enough to wipe the mud and dirt off him while he was out, so that he would not shame the clan when he stood before the Keeper and the shemlen.

Little good it does him. The Keeper asks what they found of Tamlen, and Idris must tell her the terrible truth. The words come out curt, short: "Nothing. He's gone."

The Keeper bows her head. Merrill must have mentioned what happened to Idris in the temple, as the discussion turns to his cure. Idris is completely disinterested, and the Keeper enjoins him to speak to Hahren Paivel regarding a service for the dead while she meets with the Grey Warden.

Idris would have done that anyway. While Paivel despairs of his smart mouth, Tamlen was close to the storyteller and often dragged Idris to listen to his tales. Paivel is so often stern with him, but today, the storyteller's voice is quiet and soft, resigned to a grim answer even as he asks the question.

_Is he truly lost to us?_

Idris came back with a shemlen, instead of his lethallin. What an unfair trade. Tears well up in Idris's eyes for the first time in this whole nightmarish affair. "It's my fault. I failed the clan," he says thickly, and ducks his head to scrub at his unworthy eyes. Such shame, he thinks, such loss for Clan Mahariel.

"You've done nothing of the sort, da'len," Paivel replies. His lined face is sorrowful, his voice tender yet strong. "Do not blame yourself." Idris's shoulders hitch. "It seems the will of the Creators that I sing the dirge for those I held in my arms as babes," the storyteller murmurs, turning away. "I think I know why our immortal ancestors would sleep."

Tamlen deserves to be mourned, and that is why, as Paivel speaks a poem for the dead, Idris permits himself to grieve, tears running down his cheeks. He does not deserve solace; he abandoned his clan-brother for dead, he failed to find even a body to return to the earth, and he should for shame go back into that darkness and never return. Paivel places a comforting, heavy hand on his shoulder and promises that the clan will sing for Tamlen, that they will pray together for Tamlen's safe passage into the arms of the Creators.

It is not enough, but it is all Idris has, and he knows what it would have meant to Tamlen. He nods, taking a deep, steadying breath. The forest air is sweet and clean, and the wind dries his tears. He spends a short time sitting alone beneath a tree, trying to remember Tamlen as he was: vibrant and graceful and deadly, a proud Dalish who cared about the past and future of his people, a strong youth who had already brought his clan much joy, who would have brought yet more, who would have heaped honor and success upon them all. Clever as a fox, loyal as a hound, hawk-eyed, a brilliant archer. Dry and witty, wry and sarcastic, with a reckless streak and a love of stories. A partner in crime, a good clan-mate and friend, a brother in truth.

Idris finds that he is cracking his knuckles over and over as he sits, waiting for the Keeper to be done. Tamlen used to tease him about the habit. _Good luck finding a wife who will tolerate that disgusting sound, lethallin. _He kneads his knees instead until the Keeper emerges from her aravel, the insufferable shem by her side. His very presence makes Idris's gorge rise, a reminder that the shem was right, that Tamlen had indeed passed someplace Idris could no longer reach. But Idris goes to them as the Keeper has asked.

It is not the Keeper who speaks first; it is the shemlen, a rudeness the Keeper allows to pass without comment. "When I leave, I hope you will join me. You would make an excellent Grey Warden," the shemlen says.

Idris looks at the Keeper, his eyes wide. What an absurd suggestion. He is going nowhere with this outsider. "I can't just leave my clan," he says slowly. _You surely would not ask me to just leave my clan, _he is pleading of his Keeper.

"And we would not send you away, but there is more at stake," says the Keeper, and she is pleading with him in return. Idris stares at her, shock a taste in his mouth as sharp and foreign as bile. He hears without understanding when the shemlen stranger speaks, not unkindly: the darkspawn taint will kill him; the Grey Wardens will save him.

The words don't _mean _anything. His mind runs the same track restlessly. Why hadn't the useless shem found Tamlen, then? Idris and Tamlen could have joined together, and been a blight upon the Blight and laughed the whole way through and come safely home and instead, Idris has lost a brother and is consumed by the song that burns inside him, a song that must have strangled Tamlen straightaway, a song the Grey Wardens somehow have the power to shut away, which is an ability that his clan-mate could have bloody used and now this presumptuous shem lays claim to _him_ and the Keeper is going along with this?

Idris considers his voice respectably level, given the circumstances. "Will I be able to return to my clan?"

The Keeper is a font of wisdom in trying times, a repository of knowledge in a world that disdains their heritage and history. As befits her role, her voice is always steady. But Marethari is old even for an elf, and her voice sags as she speaks. "We do not know. But we could not watch you suffer." The burning sun is unkind to her face, throwing the creases there into sharp relief. "The Grey Warden offers you a chance to survive."

The shemlen puts his two bits in, but Idris is watching the Keeper, who meets his gaze with a depth of sorrow and compassion that leaves him shaken and shaking. "Is the clan sending me away?" he says in hoarse disbelief. His heart is thumping hard.

She speaks. _A great army of darkspawn gathers in the south._ He feels the drum of their steps against the earth, the deep, hollow percussion. _A new Blight threatens the land_. He hears iron and steel scraping out of the sheath, flashing darkly beneath the bloated sun. _We cannot outrun this storm. _

"It breaks my heart to send you away," the Keeper says, her voice catching. "As it would to watch you die slowly from this sickness. This is your duty, and your salvation."

"This is all I've ever known!" Idris's voice is rising despite himself. The melody is a many-fanged beast that rears its head and lets gape its maw. The sweetest song he has ever heard sighs and whispers in his head. He is helpless in its grip, aches with it, but pushes past that place in his tainted heart where it burns. He shouts: "This is my home!"

The shem mouths something or other. Idris shakes his head, denying the song and shemlen both. But the keeper's worn voice is heavy with unshed tears. "I... cannot express my sadness at sending one of our sons off into such danger, away from the clan that loves him," the Keeper says. Protests are born and die on Idris's lips, unspoken, his breath coming fast. "But if this is what the Creators intend for you, da'len, meet your destiny with your head held high. No matter where you go, you are Dalish. Never forget that."

The sun is too hot, yet Idris is cold, gooseflesh prickling down his arms. Freezing sweat drips down his back, a tickle at the base of his spine. The song is a dirge on the march, and his head could split with it if his heart weren't breaking first. He has lost a brother. The whole clan has. Must he lose them, too? And they him? "Please do not cast me away!"

"I am sorry, da'len," Keeper Marethari says, and she looks at the despicable shemlen.

"Very well," the shemlen sighs. "You leave me no choice. I hereby invoke the Right of Conscription."

Idris looks frantically from the shemlen to the Keeper. It cannot be.

"And I witness and acknowledge your invocation, Duncan of the Grey Wardens," the Keeper says with heavy finality.

"You cannot make me serve against my will," he whispers through numb lips, and his own voice seems very far away.

The shemlen snaps somewhat impatient in response, and the Keeper reaches out to Idris. Her hands flinch momentarily when they touch his; her hands feel hot as brands, and his must be cold as snow. Regardless, she closes his hands around the ring now in his palm. "I know you'll do your clan proud, da'len."

His hands tighten around the ring when she releases him. "I would like to stay for Tamlen's funeral," he manages. The shemlen agrees.

Idris feels like cattle, lower than a slave.

He stumbles through that moment, and the next moment, and all the moments smear together into one long, painful tumult as the clan mourns not one son gone, but two. Ashalle prays for him and Tamlen both as if Idris is already lost, as if the elf before her is little but walking dead. The cramp starts up in his gut again, and the world wobbles a little. The faces of his clanmates waver, and their prayer, sung loud, flung high, is jarring and dissonant against the song he carried from the ruins. He wants his brother Tamlen at his side. He wants the song in his head to stop.

But Duncan of the Grey Wardens wants a warrior to vanquish darkspawn, and all this nonsense about a cure is just that: so much pablum. The song of destruction will not end until it has consumed everything. Idris unsheathes his blades as he turns his back on the clan that mourns him for dead, and he prays for his swords, that they may kiss endless flesh, drink deep of blood and wreak suffering wheresoever they may fall. _Destroyed. Down_.

Then everyone will be happy: the Grey Warden who owns his fate, the Keeper who cast him out, the brother whom he let fall into darkness, the clan he has failed, and the damnable, beautiful, ceaseless song.


End file.
